Why I Switched to the Rainmaker Platform (and Why You Should Consider Switching, Too)

If you decide to sign up for the Rainmaker Platform’s free, no-risk trial; I’d love it if you used my affiliate link. Enjoy the post, my friends.

Losing my job was one of the most horrible and wonderful things to happen to me.

For four months, I was in limbo. Paychecks stopped being deposited. Savings accounts started dwindling. Ramen noodle consumption skyrocketed.

This wasn’t part of “the plan.”

It wasn’t what I had in mind when I entered the work force 12 years ago. It wasn’t what I had in mind when I worked 40+ hours a week while going to graduate school. It wasn’t what I had in mind when I proposed to my wife, confident in the knowledge I would be able to financially support her and our future family.

And yet, there I was. Contemplating our future. Contemplating a career change. Contemplating whether or not to put on pants that particular day.

Somehow, as He often does, God blessed me during this trial. Oh, sure, I was worried about finding work and paying bills. But this worry couldn’t override the fact I was able to spend every morning, every afternoon, and every evening with my wife.

We woke up and, instead of me having to rush off to work, we had coffee together. Instead of working on [top secret projects] in my windowless office, I helped my wife wash dishes while looking out our kitchen window. Instead of eating lunch at my desk while watching cat videos on YouTube, I had lunch with my wife on the couch while we watched Netflix.

When the phone call came telling those of us who remained to come back to work, it was a bittersweet moment. Sweet because I could stop worrying about money. Bitter because what I would be giving up…

I loved being at home with my wife.

The Start of Something Good

Sometime during those 4-months of limbo, I decided I wanted to find a way to work from home. Honestly, I’m not sure why the thought hadn’t occurred to me before. I do four things well — develop websites, blog, teach, and sneeze with my eyes open — and three of those things are ideal for home-based businesses.

I had been a teacher for 3 years. I had been blogging for almost 10. I had been developing websites for over a decade, and creating custom WordPress themes for almost as long. Why wasn’t I using my experience to help other bloggers?

That’s when the idea for Be A Better Blogger was born.

Using Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger as inspiration, I wanted to create the greatest “blogging on blogging” blog since… well, ProBlogger. At the same time, I wanted to present content in a way people weren’t accustomed.

I wanted to be motivational. I wanted to be entertaining. I wanted to be funny. Much like I did when I taught classrooms full of high school freshmen, I wanted my readers to not even realize they were learning.

If I could accomplish this tricky feat more times than not, I knew I had a chance to be successful.

A year later, this idea has turned into a thriving blog. I’ve written the most popular guest post in the history of Jon Morrow’s Boost Blog Traffic. I’ve gone from 22 to 21,704 (and climbing) followers on Google+. I’ve made more blogging friends than you can shake a stick at (if you were inclined to do so for some reason).

I feel incredibly fortunate and blessed. A year ago, I wouldn’t have dreamed I could be here right now. Here is great. Here is awesome.

But here isn’t enough.

I Dreamed Big

If my goal was for Be A Better Blogger to earn enough money to buy Starbucks once a month, then guess who has two thumbs and one vanilla latte? That’s right. This guy.

“No, I don’t want a ‘tall,’ Mr. Barista. Give me the ‘grande’ size. It’s been a good month!”

However, that wasn’t my goal. I dreamed bigger. A good bit bigger.

My goal is to do this for a living.

I want to be able to quit my day job, work from home, and spend as much time with my wife and our future children as I possibly can.

That’s my goal.

And to reach it, I can’t be content with “nice traffic.” I need great traffic.

I don’t need several thousand followers on social media. I need tens of thousands.

I don’t need a few hundred email subscribers. I need ten times that many.

Aiming high? You better believe it. And to be where I want to be, I have to constantly be thinking several moves ahead.

What Rainmaker is

Before I can go into my reasons for switching to Rainmaker, I first need explain what the heck it even is.

Some of you may already be familiar with it, but I imagine most of my readers know very little about it. And if you Google information on the Rainmaker Platform, you’ll find descriptions like “all-in-one platform” and “turn-key website solution.”

Those descriptions are simultaneously accurate… and ridiculously vague.

Rainmaker is a powerful, hosted platform built on WordPress. For a monthly (or annual) fee, your website runs on the platform, is hosted by Copyblogger’s fast and secure servers, and has access to a growing list of features.

I’ll discuss those features (or at least the ones which compelled me to sign up) momentarily.

What Rainmaker is Not

It’s not a domain registrar. You need to already have your own domain name, such as beabetterblogger.com, or you need to go to a registrar such as GoDaddy or Namecheap to buy one.

It’s not an email provider. If you want to have an address such as yourname@yourdomain.com, this capability is not offered by Rainmaker (“due to performance and security reasons”). You will have to use a service like Google Apps Email or GoDaddy’s Email Essentials, which costs $4 to $5 per month.

It’s not for bloggers who love plugins. Because it’s a hosted platform, you can’t just pick and install any plugin you desire. (More on this one in a little bit.)

It’s not for casual bloggers. If you have zero plans to monetize your blog or website, Rainmaker is an unnecessary luxury. Could it get the job done? Of course. But it would be overkill.

Finally, it’s not irreplaceable. By this I mean you could duplicate most of, if not all of, what Rainmaker offers. You could buy a premium theme here, a hosting account there, a plugin here, a tool there… wash, rinse, and repeat. And if done properly, the end result could be just as good as a site built with Rainmaker.

It just will have cost you more. More of your money. More of your time.

Why I Switched to the Rainmaker Platform

I’m a frugal guy. I value… well, value.

That’s the difference between someone who is cheap, and someone who is frugal. A cheap person doesn’t like to spend money period. A frugal person will happily spend money if it’s a good deal.

A cheap person would never purchase something like Rainmaker. Never in a million years.

But a frugal guy like me? A guy who will gladly spend $1 today if it will save him $2 tomorrow? Such a guy would research it, strongly consider it, and pray about it.

And that’s what I did.

What I soon realized is Rainmaker could eliminate certain expenses I have today, and many expenses I planned to take on in the future.

Starting at $37 per month (paid quarterly), LeadPages is a lead-generation platform which helps you turn readers into subscribers. In this screenshot, you can see an example of LeadPages used by my friend Adam Connell of Blogging Wizard.

I signed up for LeadPages after being blown away by its amazing features. It allowed me to create “LeadBoxes” like the one used by Adam in the image, and it let me create some slick-looking landing pages.

And it’s worked. The number of subscribers I’ve gained since signing up for LeadPages has gone way up!

That’s good.

But it costs $37 a month.

That’s over 1/3 the cost of Rainmaker, which covers some of the same territory as LeadPages.

I won’t have as many templates for landing pages to choose from with Rainmaker as I do with LeadPages, but the number is more than adequate and the quality is excellent. My Welcome page was created using Rainmaker’s landing page template.

Is it a perfect replacement? No, but combined with AWeber and free options offered by SumoMe, I won’t be hurting for list-building tools if I decide to leave LeadPages.

Buffer / Hootsuite

Buffer and Hootsuite are social media management systems. Both offer free plans, and their paid plans cost around $10 a month.

These tools allow you to schedule updates on social media platforms in advance. So, for example, if I was about to go on vacation for a week, I could schedule it so tweets would be published throughout the week while I was away.

I could be sleeping, swimming at the beach, or fighting a bear in the mountains; all the while my Twitter account is posting tweets promoting my “The Howdy Neighbor Technique” post.

Scheduling tools like these come in very handy as you get more involved in social media. And the bigger you get, the bigger your needs. In the past, I have used Buffer’s free plan. But upgrading to their paid plan is something I’d already planned on doing sometime soon.

Well, now I won’t have to.

One of the newer features of Rainmaker is “social media posting and scheduling.” I’m able to schedule tweets hours, days, and weeks in advance. And I’m able to do it right there in my Rainmaker dashboard.

I’m a huge fan of AWeber. It’s an opt-in email marketing service used by over 120,000 businesses, bloggers, and entrepreneurs.

When a reader subscribes using one of my forms here at Be A Better Blogger, they’re added to a mailing list maintained by AWeber. I can then email my list, and AWeber works to ensure my messages aren’t labeled as spam. I’m able to track subscribers, see who is opening my emails, see who is clicking on links in my emails, and much more.

You’ve probably heard other bloggers say “the money is in the list.” That’s true, and it should give you an idea how important it is use a reliable email service.

However, “reliable” usually isn’t free. And in AWeber’s case, it sets you back $19 a month if you have 500 subscribers or less. Have more than 500? It’ll cost you $29 a month. Have more than 2,500 subscribers? Now you’re paying $49 a month.

You can see where this is going. The more subscribers you have (yea!) the more you pay (boo!). And if God smiles down at me and grants me 10,000 or more subscribers, I’ll be paying a whopping $130 a month to AWeber.

Granted, you can chalk this up as one of those “nice problems to have.”

But what if you could eliminate the excess cost from the equation?

One feature Rainmaker will be implementing in the months to come is an “integrated email service.” Once it’s launched, and once it’s worked out any bugs it might have, I could cancel AWeber and switch my list over to it.

And I will be saving $19, $29, $49, etc. each month when I do.

To quote Annie Edison: “That’s jacket money!”

“Okay, Kevin. You’re frugal and Rainmaker will cut down on future expenses for you. But what else?”

I get it. I know frugality means little in a vacuum.

Rainmaker helps me with those expenses, but they’re voluntary expenses. I don’t have to use an email service like AWeber. I don’t have to use Hootsuite or Buffer. And I certainly don’t have to pay for lead-generation software like LeadPages.

These are expenses I’ve taken on, or will soon take on, because I believe they’re necessary. I believe I need them to help me be the best blogger I can be. I believe I need them to help take my blog from here…to there.

Having the potential to eliminate the aforementioned expenses is how a platform like Rainmaker gets the attention of a frugal guy like me.

It makes me sit up and take notice.

Then it gets the wheels in my head turning.

“Wow, imagine what I could do with that.” Or, “boy… the things I could do with this feature.”

Rainmaker is designed for people who mean business. It’s designed to help you go from where you are to where you want to be.

It’s designed for the dreamers like me.

I didn’t “need” Rainmaker in order to reach my goal of working from home full time. But as I researched and prayed about it, it became clear the platform would give me a far better chance…

My site would be hosted on state-of-the-art servers, the same used by Copyblogger and Chris Brogan

Previously, Be A Better Blogger was hosted on a shared server which cost me $3.96 per month. As a starter host, it was fine. It served my needs well. The site rarely experienced down time, and the customer support was adequate.

But was it fast? Was it secure?

No. No it wasn’t.

According to Alexa.com, 87% of sites are faster than Be A Better Blogger. This was despite the fact it was built on the Genesis Framework, which is known for its clean code, and designed by yours truly, a trained web developer who created the theme with speed in mind.

My web host was friendly to my wallet, but it wasn’t friendly to my visitors. Online, speed is the name of the game. And if Be A Better Blogger was slower than 87% of the sites online, my site was losing.

From now on, my readers will get to experience a faster website. I’ve gone from a 4 cylinder engine to an 8. And I no longer have to deal with upgrading my site someday once it gets more popular. I’m already with a web host built for large traffic.

I could easily create free or paid membership areas

Built into Rainmaker is the ability to create membership areas. So, let’s say I wanted to create content that only “members” could access.

Maybe I have a few PDF bonuses. Maybe I have an eBook. Maybe I have a never-before-seen blog post titled “What the Little Mermaid Can Teach Us About Blogging.”

With Rainmaker, I could create a library or membership area on Be A Better Blogger. When someone joins it, they would be granted access to all the content I made available for members.

By offering a free members area, I could entice more people to join my mailing list. This is a strategy used successfully by numerous businesses and blog owners, including my friend Bryan Harris of Video Fruit.

Thanks to Rainmaker, it’s a strategy I can easily implement one day, too.

I could easily sell my products

Ultimately, I’m going to write an eBook or two or ten. Ultimately, I’m probably going to create an online course. Ultimately, I’m going to create something.

The free content I create each week will never end. I enjoy blogging too, too much for it to ever go away. Still, the reality is it serves a greater purpose.

The more content I create, the more readers and subscribers I gain. The more readers and subscribers I gain, the more people who will buy or promote my digital products. The more people who buy my digital products, the more feasible “quitting my day job” becomes.

And once I’m ready to join my friends Jaime Buckley and Brittany Bullen in the book-writing game, Rainmaker will make it easy for me to sell my products thanks to its integrated shopping-cart and merchant features.

It would eliminate distractions

I’ve been a web developer for 13 years. I’m also a micro-manager. I’m also a perfectionist.

Know what that means? Well, yes, it means I have the ability to drive my wife crazy. But mainly, it means I can’t… stop… redesigning.

Be A Better Blogger is a year old, and yet I have “tweaked” its design approximately 274 times. And I’ve tested countless number of plugins.

Most of these tweaks and plugins have been very, very small.

And that’s the point. I’m tweaking and changing things which 99.9% of my readers won’t even notice. In most cases, my wife and I are the only ones who notice. And the only reason she notices sometimes is because I point them out to her.

This is a horrible, horrible use of my time.

There’s no money in it. I’m simply scratching an itch. Don’t you think my time would be far better served writing blog posts? Or working on an eBook? Or connecting with new bloggers?

Absolutely it would.

As much as anything, that’s what it does for me. Rainmaker protects me from me. It’s like those cones dogs wear around their necks. [tweet this]

Rainmaker comes with 27 HTML5 responsive designs to choose from, most of which have multiple color options. I do have the ability to submit my own custom theme for review, but I’ve made a conscious decision not to do so.

I picked one of the 27 designs. Yes, I tweaked it. (They provide the Custom CSS option. I couldn’t help myself.) But there’s only so much I can change these existing themes.

Besides, they don’t need changing. These designs are the same premium Genesis themes sold by StudioPress. They’re beautiful. I picked the one I liked best, put my own spin on it, and now I’m leaving it alone.

True, it requires a bit of self control on my part. I can constantly tweak the CSS if I so choose. It’s going to be on me not to do so.

As for plugins, yes, I can no longer install any WordPress plugin I desire.

That’s simply a product of hosted platforms. I’m limited to what Rainmaker offers.

Many of the plugins I used and enjoyed previously are no longer an option for me. Goodbye CommentLuv. Goodbye Q2W3 Sticky Widget. Goodbye “subscribe to replies to your comment” plugin (and sorry I can’t remember your name).

Some of these I’ll definitely miss. Some were incredibly useful.

But did I need all of them? Not really.

Plugins are like potato chips. When you start out, you plan on only having one or two. Next thing you know the entire bag is gone. For WordPress users, what starts out as a handful of “essential” plugins soon turns into baker’s dozen. Times two. Plus seven.

Heck, I routinely fell into the trap even though I knew better. Plugins slow down your site. They break. They have to be updated over and over.

Honestly? It’s a relief not having to deal with them anymore. Now, I can…

Focus on What Matters

Rainmaker frees me from the often-unnecessary burdens of running a blog and allows me to do what matters.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

A couple years ago, Derek Halpern of Social Triggers referenced a book by Marshall Goldsmith to explain why he was about to begin producing YouTube videos.

The book was titled “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful.”

Derek had already reached an enviable level of success by this point, but he knew the things which had gotten him to his current level at the time — blog posts and podcasts — weren’t enough to get him to the next level. He didn’t want to plateau, so he added “video” to his arsenal.

Though I’m several rungs down the success ladder today than Derek was two years ago, I was approaching the same crossroads in which he found himself. I could have been passive, waited until I hit the inevitable plateau, and figured out a solution when the time came…

Or, I could be proactive. I could position Be A Better Blogger with the future — not what’s worked for me in the past — in mind. I could give my dream its best chance for success.

I chose the latter.

I chose Rainmaker to make it easier to grow my site. Whether it’s a membership area, forum, podcast, or something else entirely, I now have integrated tools to make it happen. I can now do A/B testing, to see what’s working and what isn’t. I can now track my progress without getting elbow deep into Google Analytics. I can now spend less time updating plugins and themes, and more time updating content.

I can now focus on the important things.

The Rainmaker Platform has every feature I need today, every feature I’ll need tomorrow, and probably every feature I don’t yet know I need.

Reader Interactions

Comments

A good introductory part, creating an interest to read the main article. “Rainmaker Platform” is really unknown to me. I have heard this word first time. I am waiting for the next article on this topic…

Even i had heard Rain Maker platform for the 1st time, i am also using Shared hosting of Hostgator and when i look at my alexa it show’s 85% blogs are faster then mine. How can i improve this, i am using Hostgator as well as Genesis Framework

When you announced that you were changing the site, I started researching the RainMaker platform. It looks very interesting–and I started wondering if I should do the same, for many of the reasons they created it for.

This totally sounds fabulous and I can see why you made the switch, especially when you highlighted the features of Rainmaker. I’m going to tuck this information under my wing (pin it) in case I decide to up my blogging game. However, in the meantime, I plan on writing the next big novel at NaNoWriMo 2014. See, I can dream big too!

Congrats on the move, I hope all your plans pan out because I love seeing others succeed!

Wishing you a lovely day.

PS – The one thing I do miss is your automated commenting system. I love knowing when bloggers reply to my comments and I have a short attention span so I rarely return to a post unless it’s been pinned or I really need it. Automated commenting keeps the conversation going and can even get commenting going between other bloggers on your site. If Rainmaker can accommodate that feature, that would be awesome.

I’m super curious to hear your thoughts on this! I heard about Rainmaker a while back and I think a lot of the features are fantastic.

I’m also curious as to whether it will catch on in the blogging world for the “everyday” blogger. I’m sure it’s something I will have to familiarize myself with, as one of my clients will undoubtedly want to try it.

I’m not quite ready to make the jump myself yet, just because “fiddling around with my website” is my favorite part of blogging. Lol

However, I do like your new site and I can’t wait to hear more about your experience!

My honest opinion is Rainmaker isn’t for the casual, “everyday” blogger you describe. By that I mean, bloggers who are solely blogging for fun, and aren’t trying to earn money. But if you hope to monetize it…take it up several levels…oh yes, it can work wonders.

And yes, I’m totally with you on the “fiddling around with my website” aspect. That’s going to be a con for most people. But for me, as I addressed in the post, I’m choosing to look at it as a positive. 🙂

Ooookay. After reading the whole post, I think it’s a fantastic move for you. There’s a theme going I’m noticing among all the people I find inspiring and motivational…and it’s simplification.

Focus on whatever is providing the highest ROI (and I don’t just mean money) and outsource the rest. Or, as my mom says “do less, but more of what matters.”

You’ve actually shed a spotlight on my unhealthy love of tweaking (at least it’s not twerking…) The reason it’s taking me SO long to launch my new site is because I’ve made a pledge to set it up the way I want it and then LEAVE IT ALONE for 1 year except to create epic content. (I just switched to an awesome new host & bought the X theme, so I’m committed for a year).

I think you will achieve your goal and then some. I’m a big fan of Darren, but I actually enjoy your writing style even more.

As my dad says, “don’t re-invent the wheel, just put your own spin on it.” (I have some smart parents.)

Thank you! I’m glad you’re enjoying it so far. And I’m happy to hear it loads fast for you. That’s a big, big pro to Rainmaker.

Given the company behind it (Copyblogger) and their popularity, I imagine you WILL have clients ask about it at some point. Hopefully my post will give you a little bit of an idea of what it’s all about.

I’m looking forward to your next posts about the switch. I have been thinking about it as well (with a Norwegian blog). But, I have been waiting. The only reason I’ve been waiting, and not making the switch right away, was the price.

Hopefully my updated post (filled with 3,900 words) will give everyone good insight on my switch and what I felt Rainmaker brought to the table for me. You’re right, “price” is a big factor. But, as I hopefully clarified in my post, in some situations (such as mine) Rainmaker can potentially save you money each month. The bigger and more successful your blog becomes, the more of a “deal” Rainmaker becomes.

Glad you like how it looks! After you read my updated post, let me know if you have any questions.

Good to see the site is back online. I was trying over the weekend to come on and comment on your previous post and noticed that it was offline … I was taken aback. But now that I see why it was taken offline and the result, I’m even more taken aback. This looks pretty awesome.

Change is hard and I’m wondering if I should change things up … mainly because I see people all around me changing things up.

Yeah, I hated having the site in “maintenance mode” for two whole days, but I had to do it. I didn’t want to back up my content (posts, comments, etc.), switch everything over to Rainmaker, and before my domain registrar successfully updated its servers have one or two (or several) NEW comments pop up!

When I switched over, I wanted EVERYTHING switched over. Which meant taking the site offline so no one could leave a comment…until I was ready. Haha. 🙂

I’m glad you like it. Hopefully you’ll still like it after reading my updated post explaining my reasoning!

Ohhhhhhh, scratching that itch. It’s painful when you just can’t stop and you won’t let it heal.

I know that pain, Kevin. Though now I think I do understand (and wholeheartedly agree) with your desire for change. Also agree it is a good, no…great thing you’ve done.

You and I should talk soon, because you’re already about there when it comes to publishing. Make sure you check out tomorrows post on Wanted Hero. You’ll see what I mean–AND it’s tied to today’s open challenge.

Think of this as a lights peed jump to results you mentioned in this article.

You know what? I’m SO frustrated, not being a web guy–having to learn from library books to get where I am today (not complaining–just being ever-aware of my talents and lack thereof) and knowing I’m not using the right tools yet.

I like Rainmaker. I do. My only frustration with anything I do now is–no one seems to have themes that allow me to create a pure sense of fantasy. Truly Kevin, I want to do what you’re doing–teaching kids to write and create worlds on a blog…but I still want to sell my books in something that looks a little less “fictionally-sterile” if that makes sense?

These are two worlds i have yet to see combined and it’s to a point myself that if I’m to grow as i should–I may have to give up on one aspect for another.

…plus, Hobin is bustin’ my chops for a chance to create an adventure course for fellow gnome fanatics.

(I was stupid enough to take him on a Rainmaker tour)

Wish there was an easier answer for people dedicated to visual needs/desires.

I’m glad you moved. Everything looks awesome and I’m ready to help you where I can =)
Success is knocking, buddy. It’s here.
Start unlocking the door….

What a cool service/platform! I had never heard of it, but I can see why you like it. You’ve definitely given me a lot to think about, and of course you know I’m a big fan of your work and your mission here!

I’ll be interested to hear how you continue to like the change over time. I’m not in a position personally to make big changes to any of my sites right now (mostly because I don’t have time!) but it is tempting, isn’t it… I’m a bit of a “tweaker” myself, as I suppose all bloggers are.

To your success! I’ll head to Starbucks and have an orange juice and a cake pop in your honor!

I’ll definitely give updates as time goes on. There are differences — mostly related to the absence of third-party plugins — which should be interesting. The biggest one? Unless Rainmaker does it without my knowledge, readers don’t receive notification emails when someone (i.e. me) replies to their comments.

Granted, most people don’t come back and leave another comment after I’ve replied to them. But that doesn’t mean most don’t come back to the site and at least READ what I wrote. And multiple visits to the site is always a good thing.

Aren’t you afraid your eyes will pop out when you sneeze with your eyes open!?

Kevin…this post right here is why I keep coming back to BABB.com. You tell a great story and you provide useful info. When Rainmaker came out I was skeptical and I didn’t see the advantages because, let’s face it, WordPress is easy enough and I like not paying monthly for my site.

But you bring up a HUGE perk which is cracking down on distractions. I’m not at the developer level you’re at by any means, but I am a tinkerer. Just yesterday I spent 4 hours on a new popup. Does it work? Of course! It’s fantastic! But that’s not the point. The point is that’s 4 hours I could have spent writing instead!

Eliminating those distractions with one solid platform is pretty enticing. I’ll return to considering it and if I choose to proceed, you better believe I’ll be back for your referral link 🙂

Once I got an advice from my mentor that if I plan to earn $50k per month ultimately I will be able to $15k because in worst case one achieve 25 per cent targets and we term it a failure. So this is the advantage of thinking big.

I think it will be an injustice to call it simply a hosting plan or platform. It is a complete blogging solution other than domain name.

If we sum up all our expenses we do to make our blogging earn money by selling our and affiliate products we need to buy and subscribe several products.

So it is better to buy most of them under one umbrella and get consistent customer care service also.

This is the most fit for professional level bloggers and all the struggling bloggers need to shift to this wonderful package once they take their blog to the next level.

Hi Kevin,
Thanks for the detailed writeup on Rainmaker. When I saw the announcement at Copyblogger a few weeks ago I consider signing up and using it for a site I am planning/hoping to launch in a few months. Ultimately I decided against it, mostly because of the limitations with themes and plugins.

But what really interests me about Rainmaker is that everything is all in one system. For example, earlier this year I had an issue with one of my sites. The creators of the membership plugin (a commercial plugin) claimed that the issue was with my web host, and my web host support people couldn’t find anything wrong. It was really annoying because I had to go back and forth between the two a million times and I never really got an answer. Fortunately, the issue kind of resolved itself. But with Rainmaker there is only one company providing everything, so they can support it all and they can’t pass it off as someone else’s fault. That’s pretty valuable, in my opinion.

I didn’t realize that Rainmaker was going to include email list management. That’s a pretty nice addition. So you mentioned SumoMe. Can you use that plugin? And I see you are using HelloBar. So you can use some plugins? From their site I got the impression that you couldn’t use any plugins.

Thanks for commenting! That’s a great point about “one company.” That can be a good or bad thing, of course. If the company is mediocre, well, you’re getting a LOT OF mediocrity! Haha. But if the company is good (and Copyblogger certainly is), it offers the advantage you mentioned.

Yes, email list management is mentioned in their FAQ as a future feature. If it comes to pass, it’ll be a huge bonus (for the reasons I stated in my AWeber section of the post).

Regarding SumoMe and HelloBar: Correct, you CAN’T use any plugins. (You can ask them to implement a plugin if you really want it, but of course it’s their discretion as to whether to add it or not.)

What I did with HelloBar was paste their script into my header. Rainmaker allows you the capability to add code to your header and footer. This comes in handy if you want to offer touch icons for smartphones and tablets, add Google Analytics tracking, etc. Well, one of the ways I use is to insert the HelloBar code.

SumoMe offers a similar option. You can install it as a plugin, OR you can paste code into the header of your site. I haven’t done this yet with the Rainmaker version of Be A Better Blogger, but I may soon (their List Builder app was quite effective for me).

Your question gives me an idea for a quick tutorial in the next week or two. “How to add HelloBar to your Rainmaker site.” 🙂

I can understand why you decided to change platforms – this does look good. And if it is as easy to use as you say, than it’s a no-brainer!

My own site is on WordPress and just like you said – every blogger likes to tinker with their site. I keep changing a bit here or there, getting new plugins which is fun, but I have noticed my website can be a bit slow when loading sometimes.

I’m still not 100% sure where I want to take my blog (or where I want my blog to take me), but when I get that moment of cosmic clarity, I will be very likely to follow your example (yes, I did notice that affiliate link).

All in all, a great look and great contents. I look forward to some more posts relating to your new platform.

I hope Rainmaker will prove to be every bit as good as you are hoping for.

Thanks for the in depth overview of your decision to switch to the Rainmaker platform. I honestly had never heard of it before so I did appreciate your post. I hope you will keep us updated as you progress with this new adventure.

There seem to be many desirable features for growing into the avenues you mention. It will be fun to see you expand your talents even further with these new tools.

I will have to take a look and educate myself further. Right now I am just grateful to know how to write and publish a good post!!

Good to see this. I’ve decided to use RM for many of the same reasons. I did not know about the Buffer-like posting integration that’s coming. Very cool to know, and I look forward to deeper email integration, too.

The MAIN reason I bought it was that I don’t have to worry about fixing something when it breaks. RM support will do that. And, they will make all the many many pieces work together. This is especially important when you are selling products, running a forum, integrating email and needing all the membership parts to work.

Rainmaker is a great value, and the price will go up, for sure. It may even go way up, for all that it can do.

As a full time orthodontist, I thought a blog about orthodontics straight from a orthodontist (not a agency with little dental knowledge and stock posts) would be quite helpful for our patients and future patients is why I jumped on the Rainmaker platform. It has been super easy for me, with no website developing experience, to set it up and post my third blog post this month. I will say their support has been awesome and quite helpful in helping me navigate the set up process.
I enjoyed your post and second the notion, to add some blog posts using your website development experience to help those of us who don’t know our css from our javascript..

Even though I commented earlier when you had placeholder text here, I have to chime in on your wonderful article! 🙂

Only great husband and say: “I loved being with at home with my wife.” AWESOME that it’s true, and even MORE awesome that you put that on the blog page. Love it!

You make me laugh out loud as I read, Kevin, and that’s a difficult thing to do… 🙂

What made me laugh first? “I do four things well — develop websites, blog, teach, and sneeze with my eyes open — and three of those things are ideal for home-based businesses.” LOL!

With the metrics you mentioned as your goals, I agree with email subscribers being a high priority. In my opinion, it’s good to do social media, but striving for a certain number of followers is not something I’ll be spending time on.

I’m building a list and increasing traffic and conversions. Ah hah! See? Am I contradicting myself? Traffic is important, social media traffic is good, but knowing results/roi, is a bit tough unless you’re using paid advertising and/or really good tracking and measuring software. So, I do like to have comments and social followers, but not focusing on those metrics as a goal, that’s for sure. Everyone does things a bit differently, and love to read what others are doing! 🙂

I absolutely love your goal to spend as much time with your wife and future children as you possibly can. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Oh, a platform built on a platform, eh? Cool. Ahhh, hosted by Copyblogger, I see. So, if you get no email provider, do you have a cPanel? Don’t have control over which plugins you use? Wow.

Yeah, I love LeadPages, and will keep it for sure for many reasons, but there are lots of free plugins that do what they do, not as powerful with all of the analytics, etc., and rated by conversions, etc., but AWeber does have that option, sure.

I love Buffer, yep – free again, and it’s great!

I would be very careful with your list because it’s the main and most valuable asset of your entire business. It takes a long time to get to 10k, I’m certainly not there yet, and the AWeber payment is nothing when you’re making money. Deliverability is really important, and AWeber is one of the best in the business. You also have to think about importing leads and if the new email autoresponder company lets you import without asking the subscriber to confirm again. I’ve considered switching to other companies, but have stayed where I am, and glad I did.

I love the look of your site, Kevin, and definitely want the best for you. If you can be autonomous in your business and in complete control of your assets and every decision for your business, great. If not….I wouldn’t be a fan.

As far as paid communities goes… It depends what you’re looking for. There are a lot of communities that offer group calls and group coaching type thing, and that’s great if you can get by on the generic info. But if you want personal coaching, and someone that you can individually access to ask specific questions about your own business, you’re going to feel like it’s lacking. I’ve been in several paid memberships that were high quality, awesome, but I needed/wanted more. Just saying’…

Expecting real growth, and knowing that host quality is critically important for site speed, I would only be content with unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, unlimited emails, unlimited everything with my web hosting company. Hope you have everything unlimited! 🙂

Before I moved my membership to XenForo, I had a private, password protected membership on WordPress, completely free.

I’m very happy for you, Kevin, because it seems simplicity is what you were after, and that’s what you got with this platform.

I think focusing on the important things is different for everyone. I am doing exactly that for my business, where I’m in complete control (critical) of my hosting, domain, content, monetization and have systems and checklists in place to be able to outsource work to my team as I need to. It’s a blessing for sure.

I’m glad Rainmaker can give you the peace of mind you needed moving forward, and I certainly wish you all the best with it!

In regards to hosting, when I signed up their Synthesis web hosting was referenced on the Rainmaker website. They’ve since removed the Synthesis references and speak in more generic terms. But it’s my understanding that, yes, I’m using one of their Synthesis plans right now.

Haha. Oh, believe me I know. While it’s nice to be “saved from me,” it WOULD be nice to be able to install a couple of my favorite plugins. I think CommentLuv added a lot of value (thought I imagine it does slow down sites at least somewhat), and I really miss my “sticky” widget.

The “let readers be notified when someone responds to their comment” is the one I miss most, though. And I’ve contacted Copyblogger’s support and asked them to consider implementing the feature. Fingers crossed!

Appreciate the comment and kind words, Josh. Hope you have an awesome weekend!

Keep on telling your story dude! Love it, and I feel inspired after hearing your experience and goals. I’ve no doubt you’ll make your dreams come true and will be working at home, spending more afternoons watching Netflix, and doing your networking and creating in the home office. You’re infinitely ahead of where I was when I was making the transition. Even though I was let go, I still wasn’t sure whether I would go back to work for a bit, so I hadn’t officially retired as of a few years into my online career. You’re really ahead of the game and have the mindset to do this full time, this I know with complete confidence.

Your theme is just awesome. SO clean, so clear, so simple, so powerful, as all the associated features are really what makes it go. Simple works, and I did some sidebar housecleaning on Blogging from Paradise today, to get things more simple because those eBooks are flying in at a breakneck pace – 5 eBooks, and 7 Products all together, as of today – and the cleaner I go the easier it becomes for folks to see what I have to offer. Thanks so much for the mention too, appreciate it!

The new look is amazing. Thanks for introducing the Rankmaker here. I was completely unaware about this.

This look like a complete solution for all bloggers at one place only. I would love to research more about this. Let me see, if it can fulfill my all requirements then I would love to have it soon.

I liked it’s most of the features such as “hosting on state-of-the-art servers easily” and “create free or paid membership areas”. Hosted like copy blogger is really a great thing. Because, it could be big relax for all bloggers to being safe and secure. It is a good part if we can create free or paid membership easily on our blog/website. It can save our lot of time and money with testing other services/plugins.

Thanks for sharing this in-depth review of Rankmaker. I would love to have this soon.

I don’t know about Rainmeter. But You tell us every details of Rainmeter and how we would use it.
I really liked Rainmeter Platform.
I’m a newbie blogger so this kind of information helped me a lot to be a successful Internet Entrepreneur
Thanxx For sharing this useful information with us.
Regards
~Avinash.

Haha. You might be right! I’ve definitely upgraded, that’s for sure. And I think “speed” is the thing I’m liking best so far. For me at last, the site loads twice as fast. Possibly even faster than that.

No doubt that when I intend to take that next step I ll check out rainmaker.

Wondering where you learnt to polish your story telling skills?

I also love the fact you don’t hide the fact you are practicing Christian because we live in a world were it is unfashionable to state that you are one. God Bless You because you show in your little way how important he is

So, what I gather then is Rainmaker is an actual platform with lots of features and benefits built in, meaning the $95 a month is actually a lower price than you would pay if you were buying all the features separate? Sounds awesome!

Also glad that it protects yourself from yourself! Sometimes, we can be our own worst enemies, especially when it comes down to the little tinkering we do here and there that other people don’t even notice.

As Ryan said on my blog recently, “…devote your creative energies to what prospers you mightily…”. I’m 100% with him on that, so now you have no excuses not to be creating that eBook, members area or product that will heavily increase your online income.

Good luck with this Kevin, and again, very nice write up which is about to be pushed out to social media in a couple of ticks.

I’ve been one who has been grateful to work at/from home as an entrepreneur and coach for 25 years. I can appreciate how much you enjoyed those 4 months of not going to your job and hope you find the path to monetizing your passion so you can do it permanently. That is my specialty, helping entrepreneurs clarify the path and create the structure that will support and facilitate a financially viable, sustainable and joyful business.

I respect the process you went through to make the Rainmaker decision. Creating a profit in business certainly requires limiting expenses while increasing income. I believe it was Jim Rohn who said that it’s not how much you make, it’s how much you keep that is the important part.

On the other hand, what I’ve found in all my years of entrepreneurship and coaching, is that your business will grow in sync with the money you invest into it and into yourself. We talk a lot about this in business coaching. Often people are stuck in their business, not growing, not expanding, and certainly not earning what their efforts and expertise are worth, yet they are loathe to invest in a mentor or coach because money is tight. So they remain frustrated and stuck. When we can help them shift that mindset to realize that their energy around money and the worth of investing into themselves is the very thing that their business requires, everything changes.

Entrepreneur businesses grow in the space right outside one’s comfort zone. You made a decision that appeared at first reading to be based on finances. It made for a good blog post, positioning it that way. But what I see is that you decided to push against the edges and structure your blog in preparation for the business you desire it to become. You took a leap of faith and chose expansion. Good for you!!

Whether your readers choose to examine Rainmaker or not, I feel is not the essence of learning to be derived from this post. Rather, it’s about your process and THE process of clarifying a goal, a path to get there, and the structure necessary to support the journey.

Excited for you and your unfolding!

Warmly,
Deborah

PS.. I will sorely miss commentluv on your blog though. I find it the very best plugin for engagement and interaction. I get too distracted to remember to come back and see replies unless something pops up in my email. I also like seeing all the other commenters blog titles with their comments. It is what entices me to explore new people. It’s how I found you too!

Yes, the 14-day-trial is awesome. Those who got in during the pilot program were able to get a 30-day-trial. I knew I loved it after one week, though!

For most every beginner, the price is indeed high. Of course, beginners don’t NEED all the features Rainmaker includes. They’d be paying for membership sites, shopping carts, forums, and other features way over their heads. But, once they’ve been blogging for a while, it could make sense to certain bloggers.

I heard Derek say that saying in a recent webinar I watched, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” and it’s true. Actually, alot of things that he said is correct and in order for me to take my blog to the next level, then the level after that, and so forth, there are some changes I have to make.

Like you, I don’t want to just be good. I want to be great.

“Aiming high? You better believe it. And to be where I want to be, I have to constantly be thinking several moves ahead.”

Couldn’t have said it better and that’s what smart bloggers and entrepreneurs do.

Good luck to you on your journey there. Rainmaker certainly is filled with a TON of great benefits and you’ve always been a blogger I enjoyed reading. So I’m looking forward to this journey you’re going to take.

Hi kevin; I can appreciate what you are saying about the value of using rain maker instead of paying for all these other services. However, I’m not convinced it would work for me. I say this because I have no way of knowing how accessible their system would be with speech. as a blind computer user and blogger this is my primary concern. because in addition to saving money i also believe in saving time and aggravation. And i would also like to mention one thing about your premise. While having huge numbers is one way of getting to your goal, you can also reach it by having a smaller more loyal and highly dedicated network who will read every post and share all of them. just this week i have been amazed by how much traffic my latest post got on my blog and in social media from just two motivated people promoting the heck out of me and my latest post about th upcoming ebook. and i am confident they will be there in a week or two when i announce the book is live. wishing you all the best my friend, max

I can definitely understand the fear and apprehension. It actually wasn’t bad at all. They said the move would be easy, and it was actually EASIER than I anticipated. Of course, my site is not even 5 months old yet. I’m sure a more established site could be a bit trickier.

CommentLuv is, by far, the feature readers seem to miss the most. Customers are able to request the integration of certain features, so who knows… maybe this is something which could get added at some point? I doubt it, but you never know.

I haven’t had the chance to check out Authority yet (super busy!), but I’m looking forward to it! Gaining Authority membership was a huge, huge perk for me.

Yes, not having CommentLuv is huge! I don’t mind so much about links to my blog posts at the bottom of a comment (others may do?), but not knowing whether or not you replied to a comment kills the conversation a little…

You see, I only check back here, because you sent me an email about something else, which reminded me to see whether you had answered my comment.

They’ve had one conference last year May in Denver. There’ll be another one in May 2015. The details (plus discounted price) are in the forum. What I loved about the conference is that there’s plenty of opportunity to network, meet the Copyblogger team, some of the speakers, and many attendees. The speakers were great, too (Sally Hogshead and Daniel Pink are keynote speakers next year!). But I loved meeting so many people who understand what we’re up to and discuss ideas, tactics, ways to work together.

First time I came across this name “Rain Maker” was on my StudioPress newsletter. I got a mail to that effect but knew nothing about it. Funny enough I thought it’s just every other themes which I can download on StudioPress, but reading your post today has opened my eyes a bit to what it is.

Though, I will say I have not finally grabbed much about this, which is I will be bookmarking this page to read further. Anything for our business especially in times when challenges rock our lives.

I am hoping you get the best out your endeavors my friend.

Thanks for sharing this well crafted introduction Kevin, I am looking forward to reading more about Rain Maker 🙂

I had initially signed up with Rainmaker to receive their information but they ended up sending me way too much stuff all the time so I couldn’t keep up with it all and opted out. I really have no interest in going with a platform like that which has so much control over everything you have.

I can see why you decided to go this route and I say all the more power to you. As always, we each have to do what’s best for us and I hope that this all works out of you and you benefit from it greatly. I can see that you’re reaching for the stars and nothing will stand in your way.

So you can’t have the plugins you want, well count me out for sure with that now. LOL!!! Yep, I’m pretty darn partial to some so does this now mean I won’t know when you responded to my comment? Well another one bites the dust. Dang, I just hate that…

Well thanks for the update and scoop and once again, I hope you’re happy with it because in the end that’s what really counts right! 😉

Thanks for stopping by! That’s interesting you received so many emails from them. I haven’t had that experience, but of course I came on board farther into the process. That may be it (there were just fewer announcements to make by the time I got to the party).

Yep, I’m shooting for the stars. Hope to get there! 🙂

Haha. Nope, I can’t pick just any plugin I’m afraid. (This is the big turnoff for many, I would imagine.) CommentLuv is the one I miss most, but I think the “send email when someone replies to comment” feature is the one most needed. I’ve actually contacted support (we’re allowed to request features) and asked them to implement that functionality (since it’s so important and since it’s used by virtually 99% of blogs these days).

My hunch is they will implement it (emails on comment replies) eventually. It’s too common in the blogging world not to have it, IMO.

Appreciate you commenting and telling me your thoughts, Adrienne. Hope you’re having a great week. Almost time for your product launch, right? How exciting!

Just a quickie Kevin..but what you just responded to was what concerned me the most about Rainmaker too. I have consciously been coming back here daily, to see if you replied to mine from a frew days ago….and to see what others think about this comment response aspect of Rainmaker.

I can see (as I’d expect) that we think alike with this Adrienne. Hope they take your advice Kevin.

Agreed. My guess is this is THE major downside for most bloggers. Honestly, I can’t quantify with hard data, but I strongly suspect “email someone when there is a reply to their comment” was a major source of traffic for me.

Fingers crossed they implement the feature someday soon!

Thanks for stopping by again, Deborah. I’m still trying to catch up on all the comments left me, so hopefully I’ll respond to your earlier one soon. 😉

I’m a new Rainmaker user and found your post when I googled “tweak CSS on Rainmaker”. LOL.

Your site looks great, and it’s nice to meet a fellow Rainmaker. Like you, I thought long and hard about moving my site over, and I’m so happy I did. I’m so excited about the new features they’ll be launching soon!

Good luck to you with your big dreams. I have a hunch they’ll be coming true sooner than later. 🙂

Nice Artilce, though i read about Rainmaker a bit earlier. As you said, you site was slower than 85% of websites when hosted in a shared server. Was it really due to your sever? i think alexa takes most of it ranking and site speed information from its toolbar, and i think it’s due to your ISP. Even one of my site was having an average load time of 15+ seconds which i think is definitely not true.

Glad you liked the post. I think the speed issue was partly due to my server, and partly due to one or more of the WordPress plugins I was using. It wasn’t as bad as Alexa said it was, but the site was definitely slower than I would have preferred.

It sounds like you’re a good candidate for Rainmaker then! Regarding Sumome, I’m planning on writing a post next week which shows a few of the Rainmaker “hacks” (though they’re not really hacks…Rainmaker lets us do them, you just have to know how), but I’ll send you an email in a few minutes with instructions.

Thanks very much for your reply and extremely useful advice. I’m sure your post will help others like me who are not very technical. Coming from optimizepress to rainmaker, I’m finding it harder to customize pages to how I want them to look.

I have been using the Buffer app services and its better than a plugin because I think It has no negative SEO effect. It has increased my blog traffic tremendously. I also like they way you have provided this detail post and how it can help grow ones blog.

Kevin,
Thanks for the good article. I am myself considering moving from wordpress to “something else”, because I find I am spending way too much time dealing with plugin issues, theme upgrades, backup problems, etc., etc., instead of focusing on building content and expanding my brand. I was starting to look into Squarespace when i found out about Rainmaker. Seems like it may offer 90% of what I can do in wordpress for 10% of the effort (?). Yes, I definitely “give up” some options, but I gain simplicity and a fully supported environment. $95 a month is hefty, but if I probably add up my hosting, domain, back-up, premium theme, premium plugins, and assorted other costs, I’m probably not that far off. Only thing is I worry about the “limitations”. For example, no options for managing my affiliate links using something like Adsanity or EasyAzon, and am locked into their eCommerce, landing pages, etc.,etc. Still ‘on the fence’, so if you have heard any feedback from anyone else that has moved from WordPress hosted to rainmaker, would be interested in their experience.
Thanks.
Michael

Thanks so much for the blog. I hope you are doing well with your content and growing “tribe” or community 😉

I’ve switched to the rainmaker platform from WordPress and was curious about a few details. I noticed you use Sumome on this site. Rainmaker doesnt currently have popins/optin boxes that come up, something the developers are looking into.

Thank you! That’s kind of you to say. The “tribe” is doing okay, I suppose. Haha. How about yours?

It’s awesome to meet a fellow Rainmaker user! How are you enjoying it so far? As for your SumoMe question, it’s actually pretty easy…

When you sign up for SumoMe, they give you two installation options. The first, a WordPress plugin, doesn’t fly for us Rainmaker folk! The second option is the option for non-WordPress users. It’s a few lines of script you copy and paste into the “header” of your website.

With Rainmaker, you would go here to paste the script:

Design > Appearance > Scripts

Then, in the header scripts section, you would paste the code SumoMe gave you. Then save it and you’re done.

As for whether or not it’s important to have this one your blog, that depends on your goals, I think. If you are serious about building up your email list, the options SumoMe offers are great! Will some readers be annoyed? Sure. But, surprisingly, they are in the minority. (And even if they’re annoyed, few will be annoyed enough to leave and never return!)

Welcome to the blog! If you do decide to go with Rainmaker, I think you’ll love it. It’s pretty awesome. 🙂

As for the first half of your question, as luck would have it I just answered it in Tyler’s comment above:

“When you sign up for SumoMe, they give you two installation options. The first, a WordPress plugin, doesn’t fly for us Rainmaker folk! The second option is the option for non-WordPress users. It’s a few lines of script you copy and paste into the “header” of your website.

With Rainmaker, you would go here to paste the script:

Design > Appearance > Scripts

Then, in the header scripts section, you would paste the code SumoMe gave you. Then save it and you’re done.”

As for the “tweet this” feature, that’s just a standard hyperlink, my friend! 🙂 You just need to address your link with the following format:

Thinking of upgrading to Rainmaker at some point–did they also remove the Theme Editor off of the WP Dashboard as they did with Synthesis hosting (which means, you would have to edit your style sheet, functions.php via FTP)?

Sounds like a pretty good alternative to many other services. In addition to this in-depth post about Rainmaker, it would’ve been awesome if you had a video (perhaps showing some features, back-end, etc.) Is that something you might add in the future?

Does Rainmaker have podcast capabilities? While researching hosts and blogging platforms, I’m having some trouble finding options that will work with podcasts. What are your favorite features of Rainmaker so far, that set it apart from other platforms?

Even i had heard Rain Maker platform for the 1st time, M Shared hosting of Hostgator and when i look at my alexa it show’s 95% blogs are faster then mine. How can i improve this, i am using Hostgator as well as Genesis Framework

Glad to read your wonderful experience. Darren Rowse is really a amazing person and many blogger are inspired by him to work hard to achieve more and more in life. You have shared amazing facts regarding subject and they are absolutely appreciable. Eventually, thanks for revealing a light on this topic.

Frankly speaking I am hearing for the first time about the Rainmaker Platform, it sounds really promising.
Something very easy to run hands upon. Looking forward to your next artcile,in-depth one.
The changed platforms looks amazing.
It’s always hard when we are out of our jobs, but its good to hear that
things are going pretty well for you.

Had heard of Rainmaker before but totally forgot about. Thank you so much for this extensive post and bringing it back to my mind. It sounds very promising and I’m definitely going to look into it this time.

Hello
Kevin,
Happy to read you life story. I didn’t heared about rainmaker platform before. This is totally new for me but thanks shaing information about rainmaker. After reading this post I don’t want to go with this platform. The reason you have explained to switch the rainmaker platform is awesome to understand.